The Whole Haunted World #12

Musings on traveling ghosts and The Odyssey

Screen cap from the 1921 silent film The Phantom Carriage

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately of early ghost stories (yes, I’m hoping to co-edit another anthology with Leslie S. Klinger this year), and one of the things that’s struck me is how often ghost stories from the 19th- and early 20th-century are set around roads or train tracks. Either someone will be traveling along the road and will witness a ghost along the way, or the visitor will be by the side of the tracks or road and encounter a ghostly carriage or train.

It’s got me wondering…why? Why was this such a trope during this time? Is it simply a physical effect - that something traveling quickly at night in dim lighting is likelier to leave a spooky after-image? Or does it speak to something deeper - that, for example, ghosts are likelier to manifest to an urban dweller moving through their region’s rural past?

Is there a modern version of this? I think there is, but it’s not in print form but rather in video. Every day my social media feed shows me home-made ghost videos, and many of them are shot from within a car speeding along an isolated road at night when something half-glimpsed passes by at the side.

What do you think? I’d love to hear more theories about our continuing fascination with these traveling spirits.

In the meantime, below is the long-promised look at history’s first great seance, from Homer’s classic The Odyssey (talk about traveling spirits!). Enjoy, and happy hauntings!

Odysseus and All That Blood: History's First Great Seance

Odysseus confers with the spirit of Tiresias in this painting by Fuseli

Although we have no direct evidence of this, I think it’s not outrageous to suggest that the earliest humans believed in ghosts, and ghost stories were among the first forms of entertainment. Because these most ancient of homo sapiens didn’t employ writing, we have no histories to support this theory; cave paintings and archaeological evidence are ambiguous and supply no definitive answers.

But it’s safe to say that our ancestors had the same basic needs and emotions that we do. They lived, they struggled, they died, they loved, they grieved and they feared…all of which are root elements behind belief in ghosts. A group of hunter-gatherers joined around a fire at night were unlikely to be crafting science fiction or complex political allegory, but it’s not hard to imagine them peering into the shadows beyond the firelight’s reach, wondering if that strange sound echoing through the cold darkness is the friend they just lost or even the animal they just killed.